Brooke No Nudity

Do We Really Have To See Photos Of Shields In The Buff At The Tender Age Of 10?

September 10, 1998|By Michael Kilian, Tribune staff writer.

WASHINGTON — I have some dark, terrible, shocking, disturbing news from the world of Show Business.

No, Hollywood has not decided to do a remake of "Love Story" -- this time with Monica Lewinsky and Billy Bob Thornton in place of Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal. This, alas, is not even a rumor, much as I'd love to hear Thornton saying, "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

And, no, it's not the actual, factual news that full-time basketball star, part-time transvestite and parter-time movie actor Dennis Rodman is going to make another film. It's to be called "Simon Sez," and he'll play an Interpol agent. As if the bad guys won't see him coming.

Neither is it the dark, disturbing show biz news of the astounding announcement of acclaimed British classical actor Sir Derek Jacobi -- honored for such triumphant roles as "Henry V," "Hamlet," "Breaking the Code" and public television's "I, Claudius" and "Brother Cadfael" -- that he doesn't want to be known as a classical actor any more. "I would love to do a situation comedy," he said.

Believe that, and you'd believe that Laurence Olivier stooped to making tawdry, tacky action thrillers and Harold Robbins movies just to fill his bank account with Hollywood money.

To be sure, as we learned from the exhibition of depraved, National Endowment for the Arts-funded Robert Mapplethorpe photographs: Depravity may be illegal on the Internet or on street corners, but, when exhibited in a museum or art gallery (not to speak of in the Oval Office), it becomes a cherished, inalienable constitutional right.

This was much the same as the argument made in 1978, when Brooke, by then a mature 13, appeared completely naked, playing a child prostitute, in the Louis Malle art film "Pretty Baby."

But 10?

I checked it out. I had found the item on one of those Internet show biz news sites, which cited as its source the prestigious British news service Reuters.

Reuters' source, however, turned out to be the prestigious New York Post, and its prestigious Page Six gossip column. Under the prestigious headline "Baby Brooke nude shots on view," was a story saying that, despite Brooke's long-term court battle to prohibit the public display of her kiddie nudie pix, they're to go on view this Friday at "the prestigious American Fine Arts Gallery on Wooster Street."

I then called New York information for the phone number of this prestigious Wooster Street gallery. The operator couldn't quite find it (she had a computer, not a phone book), and gave me instead a number that proved to be New York's truly prestigious Art Students League art school.

The nice young lady who answered said they'd received several zillion calls about the Brooke pictures, but planned no such exhibition. (Heavens!). She looked up the Wooster Street gallery for me, but when I called and said "Brooke . . . ," they immediately hung up.

I had no recourse but to go back to the Internet and search for "Brooke Shields." I found a site called "Brooke Shields -- How She Does Her Hair," which began, "a straight casual free-flow style . . ." I then found another site called "Nifty Network Nubile Nymphets," and hurried on to one called "Amazing Brooke Shields Gossip!!!" It revealed that a body double was used for Brooke's steamy nude scene in that big movie of hers no one saw ("Blue Lagoon"), quoting her as saying "I'm the poster girl for girls who say no!"

Then I made the mistake of looking up Brooke Shields pictures. In one, she was wearing only Calvin Klein jeans. In another, she was wearing only Calvin Klein jeans cut-offs (cut way, way off). In a third -- which was from the cover of an Austrian TV magazine and in which she appeared to be most definitely beyond the age of 10 -- she was wearing absolutely nothing at all! The headline read: "Brooke: Die Agassi Traumfrau Ganz Neu!"

One thing is perfectly clear from all this. In the forthcoming new television season, we shouldn't be surprised to find a sitcom starring Monica Lewinsky, Dennis Rodman, Derek Jacobi, the late Laurence Olivier and Brooke Shields.